PRINCETON — Her nickname is “Venus,” appropriately, as Niveen Rasheed recently has pretty much been on another planet.

The Princeton University women’s basketball player for the past two weeks has been named Ivy League Player of the Year. She has won the award 11 times in her career — only two Ivy League players ever have won the award more.

She scored a career-high 29 points last weekend at Yale, leading her team to a school-record 99 points. The week before at Columbia she grabbed 16 rebounds.

In her last four games she is averaging 19 points and 11 rebounds.

Venus: After the moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky — bright enough to cast shadows, and by far the hottest planet in the Solar System.

The senior now leads the league in scoring (16.9) and steals (4.7), and also leads her team in rebounds (9.2) and assists (3.2).

Those numbers are the main reason the Tigers take a 5-0 Ivy record against Dartmouth tonight at Jadwin Gym, and a league winning streak that should extend to 31 by tomorrow night.

Those numbers are another reason she was named to the Wade Watch list earlier this month, the award for the nation’s player of the year.

“That’s an awesome accomplishment,” she said before practice the other day. “It shows all the hard work I put in the past four years, and coming back from the injury means a lot.”

She missed the final 17 games of her sophomore season when she went down with a torn ACL, an injury that has ended many a career. Last season she rebounded by being named Ivy League Player of the Year, an award she likely already has wrapped up.

“We always knew with her we were getting something special, in terms of her motor and versatility,” Princeton coach Courtney Banghart said. “She’s competitive all the time, not just in games. The way she came back from rehab (of the knee injury) shows the kind of drive she has, in whatever it is.”

Whether it’s basketball, pool or charades.

No one knows Rasheed’s competitive nature more than her good friend and classmate Lauren Polansky, teammates since their AAU days in Northern California.

“She’s one of the most competitive people I know. She hates losing,” said Polansky, she of the moniker L.P. “She’ll do whatever it takes to win. Like this morning, we played pool. She gets really upset about her shots.”

During the snowstorm on the Tigers’ swing through New England last weekend, conditions left them stranded in a hotel for an extra day. Among the creative diversions was charades. Rasheed, of course, screamed, encouraged and anguished as clues ran amuck.

“She was really into it,” Polansky said laughing. “So, it comes out everywhere, really.”
No more so than on the basketball court.

Rasheed is effective hitting pull-up jumpers in the lane, spotting up for threes, driving through do-not-enter signs and rebounding with a vengeance.

Her versatility is such that, Polansky said, “when she’s feeling it, she’s pretty much unstoppable. She hurts you every which way. In practice we can be in her face, and she’ll still make the tough shot, and there’s nothing you can really do.

“She’s really selfless. She’s fun-loving, very sweet, and very goofy. She’ll make a fool out of herself to make us laugh.”

Not a self-promoter, when asked how she would convince a WNBA general manager to draft her, Rasheed smiled and said, “Honestly I would just beg.”

Rasheed is completing her senior thesis on United States aid to Palestine “to see if it’s helping or hurting the peace process,” she said. But Rasheed is not ready to give up basketball.

“I just know I want to keep playing,” she said. “Wherever.”

With only nine more Ivy League games remaining — six at home — she hears the silent clock ticking.

“It’s kind of weird,” she said about the senior Farewell Tour around the league. “I try not to think ahead to next month. It’s scary and it’s sad. I’m trying to live in the moment.”
For the most part that means doing anything not to lose. And being the brightest object in the league.